Hillary Copsey: Nurse finds fame as a money finder

Spend more than five minutes talking with Mary Pitman and she'll be asking how to spell your last name. She'll put it into an online search engine to see if she can find you cash — maybe from an unclaimed life insurance policy, an unreturned deposit or a forgotten savings account.

She just can't resist.

"I get an adrenaline rush when I can help someone like that," said Pitman, the author of "The Little Book of Missing Money."

"You never know what kind of difference it's going to make."

Her skills at stirring up financial windfalls are good enough that she was featured in June on "Good Morning America," answering viewers' questions about finding unclaimed money. The Vero Beach resident expects to be featured again on ABC's morning talk show later this month.

Pitman has been a nurse for 30 years, caring for patients most of her adult life minus a short stint in journalism. She grew up in West Palm Beach, moved away to Georgia and came back to Florida six years ago to be near her mother and son, settling in Vero Beach.

One night at work at Indian River Medical Center, a coworker mentioned www.missingmoney.com, a website that helps you find money you didn't know you had. Pitman was skeptical and entered her own name in the site's search engine just to show her coworker it was a scam.

The site showed her dad had left two accounts that he never mentioned. A month later, Pitman had checks that totaled $2,550.76.

Pitman was hooked. She began "playing" on the website and others like it that track life insurance policies and other financial accounts, searching the names of friends and relatives.

"I have a lot of time to kill," Pitman said. "I started thinking, who else can I look up? I started looking up the surgeons (I work with) and found money for two or three of them."

She found $2,559 for a coworker who really needed the cash. Pitman said the other nurse knew the accounts were out there, but didn't want to pay fees to the attorneys who offered to look for them and didn't know where to look herself.

That inspired Pitman to write her book of tips and start her website, www.thelittlebookofmissingmoney.com. It's available only in digital form now ($9.99), but paperback versions ($14.95) are on order.

Pitman said she has never accepted a fee for finding unclaimed money for people, but acknowledges that book sales, if she continues to attract attention like the Good Morning America appearance, could help pad her retirement account.

Mostly though, Pitman said, she just wants to help people find the money that already is theirs.